Weißes Fleisch (white flesh) is one of the songs from the album Herzeleid, released by Rammstein in 1995. Although Rammstein have recently started making openly political songs they were for a long time more subtle, possibly to avoid the popular misconception that they are Nazis. It is hard to think of this song as anything but social commentary.

I would like to say now, at the start, that this song is something that personally I find disturbing, even though the issues raised are important ones. It is important to consider that the people this song talks about are victims themselves. They need to be helped, to stop things like this happening before there are victims. I want it perfectly clear that I wholeheartedly support punishment of these criminals.

The song tells the story of a paedophile, who snatches a child from a playground and tortures him/her (the song isn't specific) for his own pleasure. The song mentions that the father of the paedophile had the same urges, and repeatedly references are made to being sick. The graphic descriptions used in this song can be quite disturbing, especially in sections when Till encourages the audience to sing along, the effect being a chorus of voices shouting about paedophillia, in the voices of people who are having the times of their lives.

This song was no doubt met with a very disapproving reaction in German speaking countries, but this is not the song that Rammstein were worried about. That honour falls to “Heirate mich” (“Marry me”), a song about a widower who exhumes the body of his wife after a year of loneliness. This song was actually translated into French for the lyric booklet, so as to deter the casual reader.

Weißes Fleisch is an average quality Rammstein song, but one that makes you think about this issue seriously. Paedophillia is a very real problem, and one which must be dealt with immediately. The usual reaction is violence, even mob justice, but this is not practical in the long term. We as a society must strive to eliminate these subversive elements through means other than locking people up or execution.

As this song reminds us, paedophilic tendencies are not developed by choice, they are inculated into us by our environment. In this song it appears that a large cause of this would be abuse from his father, which would have been a severely traumatic experience.